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Drawings by Caroline Radulski

I might have been working on her cabinet doors, or replacing her bulkhead steps, but way back in early 1990 something, I answered Chris Radulski’s phone (she must have been out and told me she was expecting a call).

“Hello.”

“Can I speak to Mrs. Radalooski?”

I laughed and thought to myself, how do you read a name and toss in syllables and non-existing letters? I told Chris about the phone call and she responded with, “I’ve heard much worse.” Unfortunately, from that moment forward, she has been – in my mind – Mrs. Radalooski.

Yesterday I ordered replacement windows from J & C Adams in Cambridge, for a job in Boxborough, and I was asked if I wanted low “e” glass. Trying to keep the price down, I waffled for a moment, when Joe, the salesman, said, “Let me check your past orders to see if you normally order them with low “e”. ” I could hear him shuffling around (surely not through paper). When he came back to the phone he said, “Ah, here’s your last order. You did buy low “e” for the Radalooski job.”

Rakkity sent me Lonely Planet Unpacked, a collection of travel disaster stories. The disasters are not on the scale of Into Thin Air, although the first short story begins with an auto accident. Mostly they’re funny. Here is the first page of Pat Yale’s, A Costly Trip:

I could tell that something was wrong even before I opened my eyes. The ominous silence surrounding me was broken by a rhythmic swishing sound. For a moment I had no idea where I was. After all, in four months on the road there had been so many different beds.

I snapped open my eyes and hastily closed them again. What they had taken in was just too embarrassing: there I was, lying in solitary splendor on the floor of Nairobi Central Station with no other passengers in sight, just a lone sweeper with his twig broom working his way around the hall and studiously ignoring this single white female spread-eagled on her sleeping bag, her backpack for a pillow.

I glanced at my watch. Six o’clock. Just four hours earlier the scene had been very different when I’d crawled off the night train from Western Kenya with what looked like half of Nairobi. Then, apparently, no one had had a home to go to. I’d watched fellow passengers confidently unrolling blankets on the floor and preparing to bed down for the night, and hadn’t thought twice about joining them. With mugging a known hazard of visiting Nairobi, arriving post-midnight without a bed to call my own was inviting trouble How much more sensible to join this embryo squatter city and wait until daylight to brave the streets.

Now, it seemed, I’d slept through the cacophony of a massed departure. It was beyond credulity. Surely nobody could sleep that deeply.

Hil, Matt and President Enrique BolaÃ’os Geyer
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For my brother Peter.

Photos of Bertha’s beach house and her house in Managua.

Travis sent me this sound file about audio blogging. He may have been nipping a bad idea in the bud, I donít know, but I rooted around some more in the authorís site and found this. Maybe a little long, but still, very funny.

On Sunday, Matt drove with Daryl to Woods Hole to take the ferry to the Vineyard. We hope he returns before school on Wednesday. This is his first (that we are aware of) road trip.

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This photo was taken by Chrisís sixteen year old daughter, Caroline. She titled it Epitome of Summer. Iím posting it, with permission, because I like pretty much everything about it: the girlís sandals, the angle of her elbow, the frozen-in-the-moment quality, and the texture of the bricks and the concrete stoop in contrast to her skin.

Mark and Matthew wait for Manny to comply.
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How about this night out for Chris and family? Monster seats at Fenway, the Red Sox beat the Angels, Cleveland clobbers the Yankees (22 to 0), and in neon – The Red Sox Wish A Happy 16th Birthday To Caroline.

A few photos of the new office. The first two were taken during construction, and the blue tape on the walls and the wires hanging from the ceiling show the office is not quite finished, but in person the place is most impressive. Adam’s well-crafted counter tops, especially the curved ones as you enter the office, are stunning.

Emma, Matt’s cousin, caught her foot as she dove over a railing and landed on both her hands. Something had to give and it was not just one, but both wrists.
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Miscellaneous Nica photos. photos
(As usual, photo links open new windows so stop clicking on that back arrow.)

Sorry, Chris, I like insects.


For Diane.
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I think the conversation went something like this:
Bertha. “Are you related to the people who own Miller beer?”
Matt. “Are you kidding? Do you know how many Millers there are in the US? Are you related to all of the Cuadras?” Of which there are about one hundred and fifty.
Bertha. “Yes.”

La Madre gave me permission to post this. I wonder if that was enough… .

Mr. Gilliam lived directly across the street from us in a white clapboard house, and from his rocking chair on his front porch he surveyed his property. With a street full of boys, he needed to, but in our own neighborhood, we were mostly innocent. Mr. Gilliam was my grandfather’s age and he might have shared similar experiences, though he lived in Ohio and Roy O’Connell, six hundred miles away, in Nevada Missouri.

They both, at an age that spoke more about their past than the present, bought outlandish cars, Mr. Gilliam a pink, 1957 Oldsmobile 98, five years before Roy, his white Cadillac. A year before I earned my driver’s license, I drove that white Cadillac; I could only dream about driving the pink Olds.

But what I remember most about Mr. Gilliam was his language.

When we played king of the hill on the edge of his sloping lawn, heíd holler, “No, no bank, papa spank.” Climb his trees and you’d hear. “No, no, trees, papa please.” I climbed everyone’s trees, but his, and I was in his neighbor’s tree when Charles reached over to touch the high tension wire running between the limbs.

It was a humid summer day in Cincinnati and we were perched Like blackbirds in that tree. Glenn and I, dressed in our white shorts and tight black muscle t-shirts stood below the wires looking up, while Paul, Charles’s younger bother, clung to the highest limb, above the telephone pole. Steven Brown, hands clasped behind his head, rested on a branch shaped like the homemade slingshot which hung from his pocket. We were honored to have Charles in our tree. He was, after all, a big brother, someone to whom you might say hi – if you were feeling really talkative.

“Do you dare me to touch it?” Charles asked with a broad grin.

We didn’t dare to dare Charles to touch the wire.

Dare him to maybe die? Nope, not us and we were mostly fearless. But we were intrigued. What would happen if he touched the black wire? Charles flapped his hand at the wire as if he were playing with a burner on a hot stove. Touch it quickly and feel no pain. His game made us giddy, but still we remained silent. We wanted him to , and we didn’t want him to. How to explain that?

“What if I touch the wire but with a leaf to protect my hand?” Charles asked.

Sure, that made sense to me. Leaves that hung like laundry might add enough protection. From what, I wasn’t even sure. Paul broke our silence with, îDonít do it,î but too late to stop his brother whose hand was already in motion. Thwap! His hand hit the leaf, the leaf hit the wire and they both bounced back. All of us jumped but Charles.

ìAre you okay?î

ìDidnít feel a thing.î

We werenít so sure because Charles climbed down from the tree, waved to Mr. Gilliam on his porch, and walked straight into his house.

Posts up and most of the floor has been deck-screwed to the joists. The happy couple pose as Jan dreams of a full width set of stairs, and Mark wonders why we didn’t accomplish more.
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